BLIND ITEM

I’ve put my husband under house arrest. And, in doing so, I’ve put all of us under house arrest. It’s not very good timing, you see, he’d say. And I know. But after her damning letter was published, what choice did I have? B’s 14. D, 15. A year or two younger than when I felt his first kiss. It doesn’t look good. There will be pictures.

Of course he’s allowed to leave the house. He’s got a new movie to promote. And he’s just secured financing for his next one. But we don’t go out the way we used to. And the burden to be jovial and so in love with him, which I am, and have been, for most of my life, can sometimes get so heavy that I sometimes feel like the performance extends to the home.

Positive denial. That’s how I’ve raised my kids. It’s how She raised me. And it’s all that I know.

No, that’s not true. I also know this: once the loving peace of denial is broken, there can be nothing but pain. A belief my husband and I both share, and it’s a belief that’s bonded us for life. Or, what’s left of his. He is 78. And I am a ways away from that. It’s inevitable that I’ll have to live a short lifetime without him. I don’t want to think about that.

B’s and D’s breasts are coming in. Quicker than mine had. I try not to notice. I don’t let my mind slip there for too long.

We decided to not have any biological children together, a pledge that, at the time, felt romantic and protective of what it was that we had, but now feels ugly in a way I promised it never would. Maybe it’s the knowing that my ovaries can no longer produce a child that makes me think strange and dangerous thoughts. Because they’re not rational. Or true in any way.

It’s not that I don’t have a life of my own. But ever since that goddamn crazy woman published that ridiculous letter, all the parts of me that lived outside of this marriage don’t seem to exist anymore.

Just like before.

Only this time I’m older and have two almost-grown children who know what the talk is saying and what it might mean.

Whenever the subject even threatens to surface, my husband’s really good at making light of it. For a deeply wounded and depressed man, he really is brilliant at making anything funny. And I laugh. We all laugh. Until our sides hurt and our eyes are hot with tears. But the laughing feels a little hollow because I worry the funnier the jokes get.

The reviews are in. And they’re heartbreaking. Even the New York Times is unable to separate painful speculation from critique, the lot of the critics focusing on the age discrepancy — wow, the male lead is almost 30 years her senior!, and reducing a beautiful, lighthearted romance into one scandalous summation: that it was essentially an “icky” (their words, not mine) tale of an inappropriately older man trying to prove that a younger woman is a liar.

It was supposed to be a love story. About us.

And the press twisted it around to make it about Her.